rumors of Spanish troops returning in small detachments out of France.  Already the Governor was known to be enrolling fresh mercenaries to supply the place of those whom he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to gain to his standard.  As early as the 26th of July, in fact, the Marquis d’Ayamonte in Milan, and Don Juan de Idiaquez in Genoa, had received letters from Don John of Austria, stating that, as the provinces had proved false to their engagements, he would no longer be held by his own, and intimating his desire that the veteran troops which had but so recently been dismissed from Flanders, should forthwith return.  Soon afterwards, Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, received instructions from the King to superintend these movements, and to carry the aid of his own already distinguished military genius to his uncle in the Netherlands.

On the other hand, the states felt their strength daily more sensibly.  Guided, as usual, by Orange, they had already assumed a tone in their correspondence which must have seemed often disloyal, and sometimes positively insulting, to the Governor.  They even answered his hints of resignation in favor of some other prince of the blood, by expressing their hopes that his successor, if a member of the royal house at all, would at least be a legitimate one.  This was a severe thrust at the haughty chieftain, whose imperial airs rarely betrayed any consciousness of Barbara Blomberg and the bend sinister on his shield.  He was made to understand, through the medium of Brabantine bluntness, that more importance was attached to the marriage, ceremony in the Netherlands than he seemed to imagine.  The categorical demands made by the estates seemed even more indigestible than such collateral affronts; for they had now formally affirmed the views of Orange as to the constitutional government of the provinces.  In their letter of 26th August, they expressed their willingness, notwithstanding the past delinquencies of the Governor, to yield him their, confidence again; but at the same time; they enumerated conditions which, with his education and views, could hardly seem to him admissible.  They required him to disband all the soldiers in his service, to send the Germans instantly out of the country, to dismiss every foreigner from office, whether civil or military, and to renounce his secret league with the Duke of Guise.  They insisted that he should thenceforth govern only with the advice and consent of the State Council, that he should execute that which should by a majority of votes be ordained there, that neither measures nor despatches should be binding or authentic unless drawn up at that board.  These certainly were views of administration which, even if consonant with a sound historical view of the Netherland constitutions, hardly tallied with his monarch’s instructions, his own opinions, or the practice under Alva and Requesens, but the country was still in a state of revolution, and the party of the Prince was gaining the upper hand.